Livestock Farmers of India are losing due to the sympathy of the Government for the corrupts

Livestock Farmers of India are losing due to the sympathy of the Government for the corrupts

The direct losses estimated based on spill over reports indicated that average annual economic losses due to HS, FMD, Brucellosis, PPR, classical swine fever was in tune of Rs. 5255 crores (2014), Rs. 20000 crores (2016), Rs. 20400 crores (2015), Rs. 2417 crores (2016), and Rs. 429 crores (2016), respectively. It indicated that farmers incur almost Rs. 50,000 crores direct loss every year due to the five fully preventable (with vaccination) diseases. The Government of India along with state government spend an equally good amount of funds on vaccination and almost one lakh crore rupees are wasted every year due to our legacy to hide the disease, due to substandard vaccines, inefficient vaccination, ill-education of livestock farmers and above all the political will (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332865437_Foot_and_Mouth_Disease_Control_Program_FMD-CP_Corruption_Syndicate_of_India; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332103614_Indian_Disease_Disseminating_Research_Institute_IDDRI). The caucus of corruption operating at all levels starting from politicians, policymakers, sub-standard vaccine producers, quality control officers, purchasers, suppliers, vaccinators and livestock owners end up with this huge loss in the era when we just have two and half year to fulfil the dream of doubling the farmers' income.

The problems of vaccines and vaccinations are complex in the livestock sector and cannot be solved without educating livestock owners, veterinarians, society and having the social and political will. For the success in controlling and eradicating vaccine-preventable diseases involvement of whole society is must, but the question, the real difficult one, is how to involve all stakeholders, how to build confidence and hunger to succeed. In October 2018, MoS for Department of Dairying, Fisheries and Animal Husbandry under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare called a meeting for the draft of a more efficient vaccine and vaccination policy; however, I doubt that the new policy will ever be adopted as it may crack the caucus of corruption in disease control in India.

The diseases are as old as humans and their animals. However, diseases started to appear in an epidemic form with the advancement of civilization. The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the advent of gross urbanization and rampant epidemics of typhoid fever, cholera, tuberculosis, plague, smallpox and rabies. In the recent phase of urbanization in the late 20^th Century

and 21^st Century with population explosion (due to vaccines only), more  intensive urbanization and shrinking forests lead to the emergence and new diseases like Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fevers, HIV/AIDS, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), monkey-pox, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus, and avian influenza

etc. But as we know that the majority of diseases are zoonotic and equally devastating for animals. If the diseases would have not been controlled in time this world would have not been in the present age of advancement and all Industrial revolutions might have gone in wane without vaccines and antibiotics. Similarly, if devastating diseases of animals like cattle plague would have not been eradicated it would have not been possible to see the white revolution. In India, we still have to go a long way to get the advantages of advanced vaccine technology to control diseases, most of which have already been eradicated from the developed world. With reference to animal diseases, we are still struggling to control Foot and Mouth disease, PPR, Brucellosis, Classical Swine fever, Tuberculosis, Paratuberculosis, Anthrax, Tetanus, Enterotoxemia, Gangrenes, Glanders, Pasteurellosis (HS), Salmonellosis and many more. There are vaccines available for most of the diseases that too technologically more advanced vaccines than used by the developed world to get rid of those diseases decades ago.

Why it is so? Probably we have bigger problems to solve, or we lack the political and the social will to control the diseases or we lack the good quality vaccines or we lack the faith in the success of the vaccination or do not want to get rid of diseases as with all other social and political problems or it is a cocktail of so many dogmas. We know the benefits of vaccines and vaccination with successful eradication of Smallpox, Rinderpest and control of so many other diseases and we also know (to some extent) the losses occurring due to vaccine-preventable diseases in animals.

Why we need vaccines and must use them? Bacterial diseases cause deaths and losses due to septicaemia and lethal local infections but viral diseases also cause deaths due to exposing the susceptible to lethal infections. You may say that we can overcome bacterial infections using antibiotics; yes it was true up to end of the 20^th century but now the scenario is changing very fast, in 2018 almost 30% of bacteria isolated from clinical infections in animals in Indian Veterinary Research Institute qualified as Superbugs mean no antibiotic cure. Then what are the options available? 1. Vaccination and vaccination; 2. Good Hygiene; 3. Good Nutrition; 4. Good Reporting of the Diseases (to nip in the bud before it spreads). Nowadays almost all livestock vaccines are produced in the private sector from 3-4 producers and almost 80% of the production comes from

Indian Immunologicals Ltd. That is the major role in disease control lies with 3-4

corporates, if they decide to produce good quality vaccines India may not suffer vaccination failures, but why they should decide it, to stop their benefits or to allow new diseases to emerge for which they need to spend on R&D to develop a new vaccine. Another role in the assurance of quality vaccines to livestock lies with Quality assurance/ monitoring agency (the only one, Indian Veterinary Research Institute, under the aegis of CDSCO), but why we expect honesty from that organization when the whole country is in grip of rampant corruption in almost all walks of life. In the life of any successful disease control program (with vaccination) there are five stages (https://vaxopedia.org/2017/10/01/what-are-the-benefits-of-vaccines/) but we have directly reached the third stage (loss of confidence in the vaccines) and progressed further due to the arrogance of the disease control leaders. Now, neither livestock owners nor veterinarians (most) have confidence that the vaccine they are using or going to use will protect the vaccinated animals from the disease. They are doing it as ritual, half-heartedly. Authorities have never come up with plans to build up confidence in users rather they used threats and force to continue with the apparently false vaccination and substandard vaccines.

Even after the vaccine and vaccination failures in National institutions like NDRI, IVRI, GADVASU, TANUVAS, CIRB, RVC, and many more corrective measures are never initiated to improve vaccines and to punish those produced devastating vaccines and those cleared for the quality of the failing vaccine batches. The question, why all this? The question often haunts, but I fail to answer all the time in the last five years (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332263494_Proposal_for_Vaccine_and_Vaccination_Policy_for_Control_of_Animal_Diseases_in_India).